US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on Sept. 8 for "Dual damascene fully-aligned via interconnects with dual etch layers" (American, Chinese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,733,472, issued on Sept. 8, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Dual damascene fully-aligned via interconnects with dual etch layers" was invented by Koichi Motoyama (Clifton Park, N.Y.), Kenneth Chun Kuen Cheng (Shatin, China), Chanro Park (Clifton Park, N.Y.) and Chih-Chao Yang (Glenmont, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A fully-aligned via interconnect structure is provided in which a first etch stop layer is formed on a first interconnect dielectric material layer containing an electrically conductive line structure to protect the interconnect dielectric material from eroding during metallization...